Professional Business People Living in America - Turk of America

Selen Comes in Like a 'Typhoon', Turkish Immigrant Voted Chatham Township Mayor in 3-2 Count; Kelly Voted Deputy Mayor

Tayfun Selen takes the oath of office as Chatnam Township Mayor with former Lt Governor Kim Guadagno doing the honors. Credit:TAP Chatnam By ED BARMAKIAN, CHATHAM, NJ - "My name is Tayfun Selen. I'm the mayor of Chatham Township." Those words brought applause from the packed crowd in the Chatham Township Municipal Building meeting room on Thursday night when Selen achieved what he described as the "American Dream" after he was voted in as the new mayor of Chatham Township and sworn in with the help of former Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno. An immigrant from Turkey, Selen came to the United States 22 years ago, starting out as a gas station attendant with little mastery of the English language. It was noted that he is not the first Turkish immigrant to serve Chatham Township since Turkey native Rustem Bey served as the township's very first police chief.

January 7, 2019
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Judge Delays Trial of Kingston Brothers As More Charges Expected

By Ben Winslow, SALT LAKE CITY — A federal judge has delayed the trial of Washakie Renewable Energy CEO Jacob Kingston, his brother, Isaiah, and a Turkish businessman accused in a half-billion dollar fraud scheme. In an order issued Friday night, U.S. District Court Judge Jill Parrish agreed with Jacob Kingston’s attorney who requested a delay. She rejected demands by Lev Dermen and Isaiah Kingston’s attorneys for a speedy trial. Judge Parrish noted there was a massive amount of evidence in the case, including 500 gigabytes of data and 850,000 items. She said the government was giving the defense 1.3 terabytes of surveillance video and another terabyte of discovery by mid-January.

January 4, 2019
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Cihan Terzi, set to become chair of Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ)

First Turk Named to Head UN Budget Committee

By Betul Yuruk, AA - NEW YORK - For the first time, a Turkish citizen has been named the head of the UN’s advisor budget committee, handling a budget of $10 billion. Cihan Terzi, set to become chair of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) on Jan. 1, first took a spot on the committee only this January. The major functions of the 16-person committee is to examine and report on the program budget submitted by the UN secretary-general to the General Assembly.

January 4, 2019
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Tickets came at premium for the opening night of the WDCH Dreams show (Refik Anadol)

Gehry’s Disney Hall, Technodreaming

Big-ticket donors watch expectantly from a parking lot across the street as Turkish-American artist Refik Anadol transforms the billowing steel superstructure of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles into a swirling, phantasmagorical collage. The 12-minute performance is fashioned from artefacts from the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s history: millions of photographs, printed programmes and audio and video recordings, each one digitised and algorithmically activated to play in abstract form across the building’s dynamic metal surface. WDCH Dreams, as the production is known, kicked off the orchestra’s centennial season with the kind of brio that befits the company Zachary Wolfe described in 2017, in The New York Times, as “the most important orchestra in America. Period.”

September 30, 2018
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refik anadol

Chobani Announces Food Incubator Participants

Tea, hummus and allergen-free baking ingredients are among the products developed by the startups chosen to be part of the fall Chobani Incubator program for food and beverage entrepreneurs. The company also will mentor two food tech companies in its inaugural tech residency program. Since 2016, the Chobani Incubator program has helped entrepreneurs that are “disrupting and improving high-potential food categories,” the company said in a statement. Alumni have also launched over 30 new SKUs and several have achieved successful rebrands, the company said.

September 19, 2018
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Starbucks Executive to Lead Godiva as C.E.O.

LONDON — Annie Young-Scrivner has been named chief executive officer of premium chocolate brand Godiva, part of the Pladis family of businesses under Yildiz Holding. Ms. Young-Scrivner joins Godiva from Starbucks Coffee Co., where most recently she was executive vice-president, Global Digital and Loyalty Development. During her eight-year tenure at Starbucks, she also was president of Teavana and executive vice-president, Global Tea, president of Starbucks Canada, and global chief marketing officer and president of Tazo Tea.

July 27, 2017
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Turkish Businessman Murat Güzel Awarded Ellis Island Medal of Honor

WASHINGTON (AA) – A U.S.-based Turkish businessman has received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor sponsored by National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations. Murat Guzel, a U.S.-based Turkish businessman in charge of the Democrat Party's National Ethnic Coordinating Council, was among those rewarded every year over immigrants' contributions to the country. "I am very happy to be deemed worthy of this reward," the founder and CEO of Natural Food Group, based in Pennsylvania, told Anadolu Agency.

March 14, 2018
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Cüneyt Gürkan, COO of TOA Consulting - Nesli Kayta, Assistant Food and Beverage Manager, Peninsula Hotel - K.Güngör Bağ, Hotel Manager at the Roger Smith Hotel - Duygu Ulupinar Magnisalis, Senior Sales Manager, Catering at The Ritz-Carlton, Westchester - Burak Meyveci, Assistant General Manager at The Village Club of Sands Point - Hande Bayar, The Knickerbocker - Alpan Keskin, Hotel Manager at The Peninsula Beijing - Seher Genel - Director of Guest Services at Hudson Hotel New York, Cemil Özyurt, Editor-in-Chief of TurkofAmerica - Suzan Toprak, Area Director of Human Resources at Denihan Hospitality Group, - Metin Erkin, Human Resources Assistant Director at The St. Regis New York - (From left to right)

Turkish-American Hotel Professionals Meet for TURKOFAMERICA

Nine senior Turkish-American executives who have worked in the hotel industry in New York were brought together by TURKOFAMERICA Magazine. For the first time, the Turkish executives, who have served at the top of New York's leading venues such as St Regis, Peninsula, Ritz Carlton, The Knickerbocker, Hudson, Roger Smith and Denihan Group, have gotten together.

January 16, 2018
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turkish hotel professionals

Danielle Frederick, Licensed Real Estate Salesperson, CORE Real Estate and Leslie Wade, Licensed Real Estate Salesperson at Douglas Elliman Real Estate at the RED in NYC event.

The Turk That Has Brought Together the Real Estate World of New York

Many of the known representatives of New York’s real estate sector get together every month. With this meeting, over 500 members of the sector, ranging from entrepreanuers owning investments worth of billions of dollars and agencies selling property to bankers providing financial support and property marketers, get a chance to improve their business relations and have new customers. And, the person who has managed to bring together the giants of New York’s real estate sector is a Turkish entrapreneur, Selman Yalçın. Yalçın has a grasp of the sector to an extend where he knows each of over 500 guests joining the meeting in person. People meeting each other at this meeting first ask each other, ‘How do you know Selman?’

January 16, 2018
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Kucuk Gungor Bag, General Manager of Roger Smith Hotel

Management in Hotel Industry from Grandfather to Grandson

One of the most persistent names among the Turkish executives in New York’s hotels is Küçük Güngör Bağ. Having been working at Roger Smith Hotel for 11 years, Bağ holds a position as the manager of the hotel. Both his father and grandfather were also hotel managers. Bağ studied hotel management in Turkey’s Bolu İzzet Baysal University. After coming to USA, he started working in Holiday Inn Wall Street in 2004. And, since 2006, he has been working as the manager of Roger Smith Hotel, which is one of Manhattan’s rare family hotels, located on Lexington Avenue between 47th and 48th streets.

January 16, 2018
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Green Card Holders Should Consider Getting the Citizenship As Soon As They Qualify

Just after taking office, President Donald Trump issued two executive orders that called for a huge shift in enforcement priorities and the hiring of thousands of federal immigration officers — striking fear among many immigrants that the administration will amass a deportation force. There are some key differences between the Obama administration's immigration policies and the new plans under Trump. We talked Ayhan Ögmen of Ogmen Law based in New York.

January 15, 2018
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lawyer Ayhan ogmen

Alpan Keskin at the front of Peninsula Hotel in New York on Fifth Avenue.

Beijing’s Five Star Turkish Manager from New York

According to data shared by Hotel Association of New York City, established back in 1878 as one of New York’s oldest guilds, there are 280 hotels operating within the borders of New York City and only 10 of these are 5 star hotels. Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons Hotel, Ritz-Carlton New York, The St. Regis New York, Trump International, The Plaza Hotel and The Peninsula Hotel are some of them. The five star hotels create diversity in the hospitality sector with the special services they provide to their customers. One usually needs to do a lot of search, especially in special times, such as the general assembly meetings of the UN in September, Christmas, and the New Year’s Eve, to find rooms at hotels in New York, which is a busy city that was visited by 58.3 million tourists in 2014, by 59.7 million in 2015, and 60.3 million in 2016. It is estimated that the contribution of tourists to the economy of New York is around 70 billion dollars. And, the average price for a one night stay at five star hotels is 480 dollars.

January 12, 2018
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Alpan Keskin

Güzel with Senator Elizabeth Ann Warren, a member of the Democratic Party, since 2013 she has served as the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts.

A Turkish-American at the Camp of Democratic Party Senators’ Elections Committee

The annual meeting of the Elections Committee of Democratic Party, which brings together the key figures of the party every year for discussion of their party’s future strategies, was once again held at the Martha’s Vineyard Island in Massachusetts. The camp that includes activities such as boat trips, dinners, and breakfasts, is known as a meeting where important decisions are made in terms of providing support for those prospective senators.The island that has been visited by 9 former US presidents, including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, has a special importance. It is also one of the places definitely stopped by presidential candidates for the purpose of collecting donations during presidential election campaigns.

January 12, 2018
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Yalçın Ayaslı at his office in Concord, MA.

The Businessman Who Spent 60 Million Dollars for the Case of Turkey

It was the year 1968 when Dr. Yalçın Ayaslı came to Boston to get his Ph.D. at the globally famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology-MIT, after having graduated from the Middle East Technical University-METU in Ankara. When he told the taxi driver that he was a Turk, he encountered, for the first time, claims about the Armenian genocide allegedly carried out by the Ottoman Empire back in 1915. Ayaslı took it upon himself to fight these claims first as a student and later as a professional. He used to work closely with then Honorary Consul General of Turkey, Orhan Gündüz. When Orhan Gündüz was murdered by Armenian terrorists in Somerville, Massachusetts on May 4, 1982, Ayaslı honoured his legacy by naming his son after him. Turk of America magazine selected Dr.Yalcin Ayaslı among one of the 50 Most Influential Turkish-Americans and summarized the reason for the award as defining him as ‘one of the people who changed the unfortunate fate of Turks in America in terms of political and cultural aspects’.

January 12, 2018
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